


There Are a Lot of Ways Sons Defeat Their Fathers

by WhumpTown



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Brightwell, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Malcolm Bright Gets a Hug, Malcolm Bright Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:47:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhumpTown/pseuds/WhumpTown
Summary: MartinWhitley killed mercilessly.MalcolmBright cries when he watches Bambi. They will never be the same, they have never been the same. Dani just needs to remind Malcolm of that.
Relationships: Malcolm Bright & Dani Powell, Malcolm Bright & Martin Whitly, Malcolm Bright/Dani Powell
Comments: 1
Kudos: 99





	There Are a Lot of Ways Sons Defeat Their Fathers

**Author's Note:**

> At dinner, I was eating a sandwich, literally just a roll and a slice of ham, and my stomach tried to empty itself of its meager contents... it made me think of Malcolm <3\. We both forget to eat and are emotional wreaks because of GAD... don't be like Malcolm and I

They move in tandem. 

She is him, he is her.

Her bones ache when he does yoga in the living room but she can’t tear her eyes away from him and finds she loves that he has the patience to bend his body into odd shapes for the sake of health. His eyes hurt when she reads to him without the overheard lamp on but his tense body eases into hers and he looks at the mountains that are their toes under the blankets and finds he can’t tell which are his and which are hers. 

When she finds him laying on the kitchen floor her heart twists itself in knots inside her throat. She resists the urge to press two fingers to his right wrist even if her heart is still throbbing in her throat. His chest rises with each breath he takes and she forces herself to swallow her own emotions. She reads him, down to his unsocked feet and tightly shut eyes. She knows him the way only lovers know one another.

She moves silently, pulling a blanket over him before settling on the floor beside him. Crossing her feet underneath her, she pulls the blanket as snuggly as she can to him. Pulling the hand of his closes to her into her lap. She rubs the tension from his hands, soothing her thumb across his palm. 

An hour or maybe longer passes just like that. Silently. His eyes are still pressed shut so she doesn’t say anything. When he’s ready, she’ll be right here.

She is his prayer but the right words do not exist for him to express to her how her soul saves his. If she lets go he fears he’ll fall apart in her arms but another day passes. Melting in the sun, she moves closer. Her skin glowing with the attention of the sun from which he has to hide. She grows tan, dark and he grows pink, burnt.

“When was the last time you checked your temperature?” He can feel her fever through his Hanes t-shirt. He rests atop the duvet on their bed, legs stretched out in blue sweatpants and a book in hand. She’s laying on him, body atop his her head is in the groove of his sternum and her arms wrapped around his chest. 

She groans, turning her head until her face is pressed to his chest. Closing her eyes, she settles back down. She’s feverish, she can feel it, but sleep is what she needs. That and for his arms to return to her waist. Keeping her pulled to him. “Malcolm,” she whispers, throat raw from coughing all night. 

He hums. He does that a lot. At first, it bothered her. Was she not worth a proper response? A ‘yes, dear’ or ‘what is it, baby’, something more than a hum. It occurred to her, that it was a selfish thought. It’s just a silly habit.

“Will you read to me?”

There he is with that hum again, eyes moving from the book in his hand to her eyes. The corner of lips lift and he grins like a coy little boy. He leans forward and presses a kiss to her forehead,” ‘course.”

He’s reading about developmental delays caused by childhood traumas and she understands it but his deep voice lulls her under. Somewhere between genetics and relived trauma, she falls asleep. His fingers are rubbing up and down her back, ghosting along her skin. 

Ghosting. 

“You’re _hiding_.”

His mistake is letting himself believe she’s questioning him. He’s hiding? No, he’s withdrawing. He’s running. Deciding silence is a neutral ground he says nothing. Unable to look her in the eyes, he still _says_ the wrong thing.

“You’re pulling away, Malcolm.” 

He sniffles, avoiding her eyes. He opens his mouth but he’s not sure what to say. He can’t lie but- “you deserve better.” The Earth and all the space imaginable separate them, can’t she see that? She wears soft greens and blues, literal life, in her wardrobe. When she’s nervous she hugs herself and sometimes she chews her nails. She’s so human and it’s the most beautiful thing Malcolm has ever felt. That he’s ever seen and held within his own hands.

He begs her to see what he is. Broken. Shattered. Beyond repair. He’s the pill bottles that liter the island in the kitchen. The shackles on his bed. A brain locked and a childhood swept under the rug. Groomed. He was groomed to be a serial killer and yet every night she kisses him and wishes him goodnight. She falls asleep beside a serial killer.

Her arms wrap around his body. Wire thin. He’s not broken, bent maybe, but the man she loves is a fighter. Always has been. “You’re not your father.” 

_A Serial Killer._

**Martin** Whitley killed mercilessly. A sadist. He drew death out until his victims yearned for their lives to be over. For mercy. He rewarded them with shallow graves and missing organs. He put a girl in a box. A child, really. Not even twenty, just scraping by. He put a knife in his own son’s hands and called it bonding, _love_. 

**Malcolm** Bright cries when he watches Bambi. He kisses Dani’s cheek and still asks before he touches her. He lost his virginity to a girl he was head over heels for and cried for two days when she broke his heart. A year after getting his license he hit a bird and carried it home in his jacket. He nursed it back to health all on his own, reading every book he could get his hands on to learn how to care for it. 

Malcolm Bright is tender. He’s loving. 

“You’re ten times the man your father is.” She presses her lips to his cheek. Smiling at the light hair that grows. “You’re ten times the man he will ever be, Malcolm.” The marks on his body, carved by his own hands, remind her that he doesn’t know this. That he can’t see how much he is loved. How he could never be his father. 

He shakes his head, tears falling down his face. They’re pinched tight, his chin trembling with the might he uses to hold his tears at bay. He fails. 

“Honey,” her voice is steady but her heart is breaking for him. She would give anything to get her hands around Martin Whitley’s neck. “Baby,” she forces him to pull just far enough away from her that she can see his eyes. “Look at me,” her fingers brush up his cheeks, his face cupped in her hands. Those hauntingly deep blue eyes find hers, tears overflowing. “I love that you are worried about me but let me decide what is good for me.”

His eyes fall back to the floor, cheeks red.

She brushes a thumb against his skin. “I’ve picked you,” she whispers, begging him to see what she sees. A kind loving man. A hero. Someone she… she wants to marry. “I know you,” she reminds him. “I might know you too well but I love you, okay?”

She teaches him that he’s not unloveable. 

He teachers her how to fold her legs over each other. 

“It’s… _unnatural_ ,” she accuses but she’s really only mad because she can’t do it. He promises it’ll only take some stretches and practice. She wants to do it now though and looking at him doing it so perfectly and painless she frowns. “Would you stop doing it! I feel like your legs are gonna snap.”

He smiles and puts his arms down at his side, looking at her with raised eyebrows as he lifts himself off the ground with his arms. 

She leaves him in the living room, taking one look at him and turning to leave. 

He finds her in the kitchen. Two mugs of Earl Grey steaming. “Ah, so you do love me,” he whispers taking the one she extends to him. He sips the tea with a smile. It warms his body as he swallows and he closes his eyes, enjoying the feeling. When he opens them, Dani has the cutest smile on her face. “What?”

She smiles harder when his cheeks flush under her attention. “You look cute when you do that.” His cheeks get even redder and she tilts her head, “what? You did, you looked cute.”

He shakes his head, “no one has ever called me cute.” He shrugs, unable to explain farther. Dani Powell, the only person in the world who looks at him, a broken man, and sees cuteness. 

She shakes her head, “impossible.” He’s cute. The way he chews his bottom lip when he’s reading. How he sticks the tip of his tongue out of his mouth when he’s working. “You’re,” dare she say it, “the cutest man I have ever seen.” He blushes and she shakes her head,” see? Cute!” 

He covers his face with his hands, hiding. 

She doesn’t let him. Putting her arms around his neck she kisses the tip of her nose. She looks at his rosy cheeks and sparkling blue eyes and a single thought crosses her mind. “Marry me,” she asks. Leaning in for a kiss, she feels his lips pull into a smile. She opens her eyes and can’t but share his goofy smile. 

He nods, “okay.”

She laughs, “you mean it?”

He nods again, “of course I do.”

She pushes her face into his chest, laughing. “Let’s do it,” she decides because she did mean it. “Let’s get married.” She thinks for a moment, “Dani Bright…” It sounds-

Malcolm frowns, “but Malcolm Powell sounds so much cooler.” 

She looks up at him, his face is drawn into a real frown. He means it. “You want to take my last name? But… Malcolm, you picked out ‘Bright’.”

Now he looks perplexed, stuck. He isn’t sure what he wants so he just shrugs, “you decide- Wait! We can both hyphen.” He looks so proud of his discovery she doesn’t bother telling him typically woman hyphen. After all, she should know by now that Malcolm bright is by no means a traditionalist.

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from the Criminal Minds episode "Public Enemy"... another show I am obsessed with


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